Interesting Times, Indeed

Last night I heard the faint cries of our lonely blog page, "Why do you ignore me so? Why does no one take me seriously?" Oh, wait. I think that was Mike Huckabee.

In any event, I thought that this discussion deserved to be preserved in a format other than e-mail. So, here is what Eric wrote: "This is rapidly becoming an illustration of the putative Chinese curse "May you live in interesting times." This is going to drag on for a while. (While you can make a case that keeping the Dems in the spotlight longer is a plus for us, I see more downside to upside of stretching our conflict out. Not every debate is going to be the lovefest that the last one was, and the media loves conflict.)One reflection and one request. The reflection is how odd it seems that the margins of victory in different states were so wide on both sides. Besides CT and MO, every other state seemed to have a 10+ pt gap. Any theories? (Besides the racial one which does seem to explain the deep Southern results.) Was there an explicit strategy on Clinton's side to go after the big states and by Obama to go after the smaller ones? Didn't see any coverage of this beforehand.The request is to send along any consolidated exit polling that you find. I'll be very curious to see the racial/gender/age vote splits, either national or state-by-state."

And here is my response:
I think the drawn out campaign is good for the Dems. They have both gotten sharper and smarter by riffing off each other. I also think that there is still overwhelmingly positive feelings about both and the more that the media show them, the more voters realize that there is a better way. Another consequence, I believe, is that a drawn out contest will likely push Hillary -- if she is the ultimate winner -- to pull in Obama as the VP, which I think would be a very positive development. Typically, you don't want your VP candidate to outshine you, but I do think it could work in this case. In a sense, Obama would help to offset Bill's looming shadow by demonstrating that a Hillary administration is something totally new from her husband's.

As for the large margins of victory, I simply cannot explain the phenomenon. (The GOP experienced a similar thing, even with a three-man race!) Perhaps this is a question for Malcolm Gladwell. After all, it does seem to be a case of reaching a "tipping point" that just pushed an overwhelming majority to vote with a certain candidate. For me, the strangest contrast is that Hillary won TN by 30 points, but lost MN by 30. I think this Super Tuesday and this whole primary season has bestowed political scientists with a huge gift. I could imagine whole careers being built on this one election. The exit polls (which are available here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21660890/) give a good place to start the analysis.

So, what next? Does the Dem campaign get nastier? Signs are there that it will. (See the fight over health care.) At the same time, perhaps this is my Panglossian view, but I do think that even if it turns nasty, both candidates will be able to maintain a general perception that they are fighting over policy, not character -- unlike the GOP -- and this will ultimately serve the party well. We shall see.